Once, a very long time ago, there was a lapsed academic who had two children. Having spent a good portion of her life studying American history, she was eager to expose her brood to the excitement, intrigue and stirring messages about humanity's good and bad sides that this country's past had to offer. However, she found that there was little material in the bookstore that she could bear to read.

Then, thanks to Jenette Kahn, the former CEO of DC Comics, she met comic book legend Andrew Helfer. Andy had created a series of non-fiction graphic art books for DC, among a vast number of other things, and was looking for new projects.

After several years of taking up and discarding possible nonfiction projects, Andy and the lapsed academic, Jessica Marshall, signed on with publisher Thomas LeBien at Hill & Wang to do a series of graphic art biographies of famous Americans. And then, in what seemed like a blink of an eye but was actually almost another entire year, Serious Comics GNC, LLC, was born.